CYOAD is Unfortunately Not a Typo
by PencilMonkeyGaiden
Summary: Dying was the least of Taylor's problems. Now, her new cutlass is covered in Nazi bite marks, her heartbeat is still out to lunch, her afterlife has turned into a video game, she's bribed Armsmaster with what was almost a stolen library book, her dad got Python'd, and her skeletal second-in-command is demanding a promotion. Oh, and her hair is on fire. Whoops.
1. Chapter 1

**CYOAD is Unfortunately Not a Typo**

 _AKA When Skidmark Discovered Macronyms_

(Not a CYOA fic.)

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Summary:  
Dying was the least of Taylor's problems. Now, her new cutlass is covered in Nazi bite marks, her heartbeat is still out to lunch, her afterlife has turned into a video game, she's bribed Armsmaster with what was almost a stolen library book, her dad's been Python'd, and her skeletal second-in-command is demanding a promotion. Oh, and her hair is on fire. Whoops.

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Dying wasn't exactly pleasant, but arguably the worst part was discovering that Uber and Leet might actually have been right about something.

I had plenty of time to curse my cruel fate, as I tumbled aimlessly through the endless darkness, surrounded by empty void. Actually, make that 'nearly endless' and 'almost empty'; every so often – in a pattern that was slightly arrhythmic and, thus, incredibly annoying in its unpredictability – a short string of large glowing white letters would appear in the black space in front of me: 'LOADING, PLEASE WAIT'. Those three words would fade in and out of existence, usually lasting a few seconds before disappearing again. They always appeared at the same distance, and always in front of me, regardless of which direction I tried to turn my body. However, once they were there, the words would zoom closer at speed, giving me the impression that I must be falling, somehow, even though I didn't feel any air or wind whipping past me.

Once, the luminous words held out long enough that I managed to fall into them – and straight through them. It didn't feel like anything; if my eyes had been closed or my back had been turned, I might not even have noticed. The words could be some sort of hologram, or illusion, or hallucination.

Then again, I might be a ghost, now. Dying was a traditional prerequisite for that kind of career change.

This was only my first clue that life – or at least the afterlife, whichever circle of Hell this might be – was some sort of video game. More would follow later. At that moment, falling through a darkened void, I started to get more concerned with my memories – or rather, my lack of them. I was pretty sure that I'd died, but when I tried to recall the exact details of my untimely shuffling-off of mortal coils, it would...

Eugh, now I'd reminded myself of Coil, which was unpleasant in itself, but even worse since my memories of the snake-themed villain weren't detailed enough to explain why I hated his guts.

Anyway. Dying. Something I'd almost certainly done, but not in a fashion that was memorable enough to actually stick in my mind. At best, I could manage to dredge up fragments of some extremely dramatic cape fights and other life-or-death situations, but I wasn't certain which one had been my undoing. Lung? Bakuda? Leviathan? The Slaughterhouse Nine? Wait, had I seriously fought all of those monsters? My mind was just too damn foggy, if I could just...

The transition from free-fall in an empty void, to discovering that I was now plummeting towards something far more solid-looking, was rather sudden, but not as jarring as the impact with the ground. Good news – the surface was covered in something reasonably soft, that reduced my landing from 'bone-breaking' to merely bruising, and knocking the wind out of my lungs. What had I been breathing in the void, anyway? I hadn't felt any air whipping past me, until just now. If I was really dead, why did I need to breathe, anyway?

Bad news – those soft, squishy, scuttling things that had broken my fall? Bugs. Lots of them, at least a hands-width thick layer. And I controlled exactly none of them. My power wasn't registering them at all, like they weren't real insects... or like I'd lost my power when I died.

Shit.

I staggered upright, standing shakily on my feet while ignoring the crunching noises whenever I took a step. I brushed the bugs off my arms, and face, and hair, and every other part of me they were scurrying across. I even managed to suppress most of my revulsion; I'd gotten inured to the sensation of having thousands of tiny legs traipsing across my skin, after having my powers for... How long had I been a cape, anyway? Months? Years? The answer eluded me.

My boot sank through the layer of bugs, and I stumbled a bit as my foot slid against something smooth and round. Taking a steadying breath, I dug my hand past the insects, and retrieved the object. Who knew, I might get lucky and find something useful, right?

I couldn't remember the last time I'd seen a dead person. Mom had died... a while ago, right? Still, I must have experienced it a few times, because I was far less shocked or upset than I might otherwise have expected, when I found myself seeing eye-to-eye with a human skull. Pale white, with a few spots of dark crimson that the roaches and beetles and worms hadn't cleaned off, yet.

A short bit of searching revealed that the skull wasn't a singular occurrence. As far as I could tell, every square inch of ground beneath me was covered in a layer of skeletal remains, human and animal mixed together, with countless bugs milling about on top. There were dog bones, long-dead cats, skeletal birds, and plenty more I couldn't readily identify. The vast majority seemed to be human, though, at least in the area where I'd landed. I couldn't tell how thick the layer of bones might be; when I tried digging down past the bugs and the skeletons, my fingers never touched ground or asphalt, and I lacked the tools and the energy to start a more thorough excavation.

Looking at my surroundings, the view just kept getting more bleak and depressing. The carpet of bugs, feasting on what few scraps of protein were left on the bare bones underneath, seemed to stretch as far as I could see. From one horizon to another, the monotony of the glistening dark sheet of wriggling chitin was only broken by a few jagged ruins of crumbled buildings. I saw something that might once have been a skyscraper, now torn in half, with great chunks of shattered concrete scattered in a sloping pile beside it that gradually sank beneath the ocean of insects.

Up above, there was no solace to be found in the vault of heaven, either. The sky was a pulsing red with streaks of flaming orange; beautiful, perhaps, but in an ominous way. A spectacle that made you think of air pollution and atmospheric fire-storms, rather than pretty sunsets or sunrises. Dark clouds raced across the firmament, as though fleeing from something.

Glancing over my shoulder, I noticed a speck of gold in the sky. The sun? No, it wasn't round. It was shaped more like...

Suppressing a sudden shiver, which I suspected had nothing to do with the ambient temperature – this place didn't feel particularly cold, or warm, or anything really, just ominous – I turned my back to the golden glow above. A part of my mind suggested that, if I waved my arms and shouted loud enough, I might be able to draw the attention of whoever, or whatever, was up there. My amygdala, along with what felt like a large chunk of memories that I couldn't fully recall, promptly jumped on top of the part of my mind that had made such an obviously horrible suggestion, and smothered it until it stayed quiet. Was it a bad sign that I was starting to imagine parts of my brain as cartoon characters, squabbling over everything? Was that a side effect of dying, or just the abject loneliness and morbid outlook of this place that was getting to me?

As I caught a sudden movement out of the corner of my eye, I rolled to the side and came up in a crouch, ready to block or dodge an attack. Unnecessary, as it turned out. The bugs were roiling with increased activity, rising into a large mound, but not making any moves towards me. Standing slowly, I watched with caution as the pile of insects rose alongside me. When the heap reached my eye level, it stopped growing. A second passed, before the insects scattered in all directions. Winged bugs flew off, while worms and ants tumbled back to the bone-strewn ground. Left behind in their wake, like gaping black holes in reality that had been gnawed out by tiny mouths and countless mandibles, were two words. They were written in huge, bold letters as large as my own head:

WORM CYOAD

A little below this, a longer sentence in more readily understandable English had appeared, in smaller writing:

CHOOSE YOUR OWN AGONIZING DEMISE

...Well, if there'd been any risk of the place developing a cheerful and positive atmosphere, this had definitely put a stop to that.

Music began to play. It started faint, but grew steadily louder, until it mostly drowned out the background noise of scurrying bugs and wind whistling past. A melancholy tune, like a funeral dirge, but with hints of orchestral heavy metal. One more word, glowing a stark white against the dark surroundings, appeared in front of me. It blinked slowly, fading in and out of existence.

START

Huh.

This was probably a good point to agonize over this travesty of an afterlife, or grieve over my lost life and missing memories, or hunker down to brood with paranoid speculations over whether this gruesome video game was genuine bona fide reality, or just the result of some Master power that was messing with my mind. Maybe I wasn't dead, after all? Any of those options, or some variation between them, seemed quite tempting, right now.

...But frankly, my biggest problem at the moment was lack of information. I'd lost a large chunk of memories, somehow, and gotten trapped in a strange, dead world. My best bet was to gather data – and those glowing white letters were a big whopping hint that someone, or something, wanted me to play their game. If I went along with this scheme, I'd probably get a chance to learn more about what the hell was going on. If I refused, the game or its designer might get upset with me, or bored, at which point anything could happen. They might force me to play the game – or decide to delete it, altogether, which would almost certainly leave me worse off than I was now.

I leaned forward, and tapped a finger against the glowing white START. It disappeared completely, along with the rather ominous title and subtitle above it. Moments later, several new lines of text appeared to take their place.

NEW GAME  
LOAD GAME  
OPTIONS

The line in the middle was a dark gray, rather than white. When I tried pressing it, I jumped in surprise as a loud, rude noise blarted out of nowhere. A text box winked into existence before my startled eyes.

YOU NEED TO USE THE 'SAVE GAME' MENU WHILE PLAYING, BEFORE BEING ABLE TO LOAD A GAME

Okay, that was reasonable enough. If the-

...NOOB

Wait, did I just get insulted by a video game with delusions of grandeur?

Shaking my head in despair at the world today, I gave the 'OPTIONS' a try. The results seemed fairly standard for a computer game, from what little experience I had with such things; the menu that turned up offered me to adjust SOUND FX and MUSIC VOLUME, or toggle between qualities of GRAPHICS. The funeral dirge, well-composed though it was, had started to get on my nerves, so I gladly took the opportunity to turn down the volume a bit. It was far less unnerving than I'd expected, when I took a shot at changing the GRAPHICS resolution, and watched reality grow less defined around me. My vision didn't grow more pixelated, as such, just blurry. It was basically like I was trying to look at things without my glasses, or with a wrong prescription. Actually removing my glasses only exacerbated the problem.

Switching the GRAPHICS back to maximum resolution, I tapped the word BACK, returning the weird floating menu to its previous state. Only one option left that I hadn't tried, now. One that implied the chance of... what? Rebirth, in this crazy, made-up video game world? Given the whole 'AGONIZING DEMISE' part, I doubted it would be a pleasant experience. Still, if I wanted to find out more about what was going on, I'd have to take that risk.

Taking a deep breath, I chose NEW GAME.

I flinched, in reflexive expectation of... anything, really. Instant reincarnation into the war-torn remnants of a shattered civilization? Instead, I just got more menus.

"What the heck are all these choices?" I muttered to myself. Some of them seemed vaguely familiar, both from my sparse knowledge of twenty-first century electronic entertainment, and from my daily life in Brockton Bay. Hang on, hadn't I left my home town for a while, at some point? The memory eluded me.

"Story Mode seems pretty straight-forward," I mumbled, trying to distract myself from the odd lapses in my recollections. "Although it seems to imply a level of pre-determinism that I'm not sure I'm comfortable with." It also happened to be the only white line; the rest were grayed out. They also had far stranger names, like 'King of Captain's Hill', and 'Time Trial: Destination Birdcage', and 'Arena Combat'. Okay, that last one seemed easy enough to understand, but still.

Tapping on some of these gray choices, I was rewarded with more rude noises, and more text boxes. These other 'GAME MODES' were evidently locked until I managed to achieve certain accomplishments within the main Story Mode. For example, if I wanted to try TIME TRIAL, I'd first need to save someone called Paige, whoever that might be. The name seemed vaguely familiar. Another mode, CAPTURE THE FLASK, insisted that I should... what the heck?

REQUIREMENTS:  
COLLECT &*$%# *£ VIALS IN STORY MODE TO UNLOCK

Looking at the surreal, shifting blot on the text box made my eyes water. My brain parsed it as a string of nonsensical gibberish, like random characters and symbols. Even worse, it seemed to change; if I memorized the code, and then looked away for a few seconds, the symbols were different when I looked back. From context, I guessed the alien floating video game text had a problem with numbers, or maybe just numerical symbols. Could simulated reality suffer from dyscalculia? Maybe I should ask... someone. I was sure I knew someone with that problem. That word, 'vials', seemed to jog a recalcitrant memory, as well.

When I felt the beginnings of a headache, I gave up trying to figure it out. Sighing, I picked my only option. This lack of choices, however, was soon a thing of the past.

CHOOSE YOUR PARAHUMAN POWER:

MOVER  
SHAKER  
BRUTE  
BREAKER  
MASTER  
TINKER  
BLASTER  
THINKER  
STRIKER  
CHANGER  
TRUMP  
STRANGER

And, uh, each of those options? Contained an even bigger list of choices.

It was like being a kid in the world's coolest candy store, where the licorice could shoot laser beams and the cherry soda made your burps teleport. I lost track of how long I stood there, flicking from one menu to another, browsing my options. Alright, most of them were grayed out, but I still had a few glowing white ones to choose from – and the gray powers were pretty fun to read about. I barely even noticed the rude blarting noises that rang out when I tapped on them.

I soon found my own, original power in the list of Master powers. For some reason, the menu had decided to dub it 'QUEEN ANT-MINISTRATOR'. Given that the option was glowing white, I was tempted to pick it, for familiarity's sake. On the other hand, what if I had access to an even better power? Something stronger, or more versatile? I could at least browse a little more, first.

As I noted the requirements for the different powers, I had a realization: Maybe the achievements listed under the unlocked powers could give me more clues to what had happened in my previous life – perhaps I could even discover how I'd died. Sadly, the locked powers didn't reveal what conditions or achievements I needed to reach, if I wanted to gain access to them. Otherwise, an obvious plan would be to find a really useful or powerful option, and then play a quick game with the sole focus of fulfilling its requirement and unlocking the power, for use in a later game. Of course, that was assuming I had unlimited lives, or restarts, or save game slots, or whatever. If this video-game-slash-simulated-reality only offered me a set number of retries... Best not to think about that, right now.

Scrolling through the list of Master powers, I noted an unlocked option titled 'FRACKY FRIDAY'. It seemed to be a Master/Shaker power, in a rather literal sense; it allowed the user to swap bodies with other people, potentially gaining access to their powers if the target was a cape, but at the cost of causing shifts in underground tectonic plates, as well.

'SIDE EFFECTS MAY INCLUDE SINKHOLES, EARTHQUAKES, VOLCANIC ERUPTIONS, AND MORE', as the text box explained. Lovely. At least the text box gave me confirmation for my vague but recurring notion that I'd participated in an Endbringer fight, at some point; the listed requirement for unlocking the power was 'USING A MASTER POWER IN A FIGHT AGAINST BEHEMOTH'.

Further browsing uncovered another unlocked Master power, this one entitled 'GLOMINATRIX'. This game really had a terrible sense of humour, didn't it? The power's description wasn't much better; it offered the ability to exert absolute mind control over multiple targets, but only while the Master was hugging their intended minions with at least one arm or leg. So, unless I found a way to grow additional limbs, I'd be limited to a maximum of four minions – assuming I even wanted a power that'd likely fast-track me for a ticket to the Birdcage, of course. Did this game have an option of, say, picking multiple powers at reduced efficiency? Was there a pool of available character points that I could allocate to purchase more than one power? Sure would've been helpful with a 'HELP' menu, but that was one thing that had been glaringly absent, so far.

...Huh, the Glominatrix power had evidently been unlocked when I took a joy ride on a Mastered minion, in my original life. Euphemistic grossness aside – I might not hate bugs quite so much, after this much exposure to them, but I most certainly hadn't developed a fetish for them, either – it was difficult to imagine any way a human teenager could ride an insect. Had I stomped a bug and enjoyed it a great deal, for some reason? Did that count as a 'joy ride', according to this ridiculous game's twisty logic?

For some of the options, the gray text color signifying a locked power could even be considered thematically appropriate, like 'FIFTY GRADES OF GRAY GOO'. Ironically, this particular Tinker power happened to be unlocked, rendering it a glowing white. According to the text box describing it, I'd been qualified to use it by "DEFEATING A TINKER WITH THE POWER OF EMERGENT BEHAVIOR". I guess Mastering a swarm of insects wasn't too dissimilar to controlling a swarm of nanites – at least according to the reasoning of this game, it seemed.

Too bad that the molecular machinery the Fifty Grades power would allow me to build was so dangerous; the text box cautioned me that using this power carried a ^:="#(¤ percent risk of 'UNLEASHING THE NANOPOCALYPSE'. Admittedly, it was anyone's guess how many percent that might work out to in real numbers, but given that the description went on to mention the possibility of joining a new villain team called 'THE SLAUGHTERHOUSE TEN-TO-THE-POWER-OF-MINUS-NINE', any risk above zero was probably 'too high'.

Of course, the game could be trolling me again, and that '£}(=#_ PERCENT RISK' it mentioned might actually mean zero. Still, not going to take that gamble.

Looking over the other available unlocked Tinker powers – sadly, so few in number – I noted one called 'SAEDER-KRUPP CHROME-DOME', which sounded promising, if a little unsettling. It involved cybernetics, letting the Tinker literally upgrade their own bodies, or those of their allies, with high-grade electronic components. Even more amazing, the cybernetics were apparently mass-producible, although fairly expensive. When I checked the listed side effects, my interest quickly dwindled; as if the notion of surgically replacing your limbs with robotic prosthetics wasn't disturbing enough, the Tinker-tech had a psychological cost, as well. Getting too many cybernetic implants could cause something called 'cyber-psychosis'. Oh, and if I picked this power, there was apparently also a risk that "THE GREAT DRAGON LOFWYR", whoever that was, would be revealed as the true secret mastermind behind Gesellschaft.

Yeah, no. Making a note of the text box's announcement that I'd seemingly unlocked this Tinker power by "CUTTING A DEAL WITH A TINKER DRAGON" – presumably, it meant the Canadian Tinker of that name, although I couldn't recall the specifics of any such deals at the moment – I quickly moved on.

The available Blaster powers were somewhat underwhelming, really. I'd held out a vague hope of getting to shoot enemies with laser beams, or super-heated plasma, or at least summoning bolts of lightning from the sky. This was supposedly a video game; death rays and explosions were part and parcel of this, right?

Instead, my unlocked options included such thrilling possibilities as 'PEW PEW GAZER', which would imbue me with the power to expel highly pressurized fluids from my tear ducts. Granted, those super-tears would allegedly be packing enough of a punch to knock holes through brick walls, but I didn't really want to risk becoming known as the Weeping Willow, or the Sniffler, or whatever other idiotic cape name this power might land me with.

Right after the Pew Pew power, there was another unlocked option that seemed like a variant of the previous one: 'ISAAC WHAT YOU DID THERE', a Blaster/Brute power that would... jeez, really? Bloody tears that could rip through three-inch thick steel? Oh, but using the power carried a significant risk of damaging myself, which the weak regenerative abilities of the Brute portion would alleviate a little, but not enough to avoid the blood loss completely. Wait, no, that wasn't the worst part, after all; even when I wasn't actively using the power, my eyes would be constantly bleeding. Great. If people saw a cape walking down the street with red tear-tracks down her face, they'd immediately think 'trustworthy hero', and not 'villainous murderhobo', or 'walking bio-hazard', I'm sure.

Checking the requirements, my tentative tally of Endbringer fights where I'd participated rose to 'at least two'. Pew Pew Gazer was unlocked when you "CRY IN THE RAIN THAT LEVIATHAN BROUGHT", which meant I must at some point have been present when a city was brought under siege by the second Endbringer. Could it have been Brockton Bay? If so, why didn't I have stronger memories of such a momentous (and traumatizing) event, with my own home town under attack?

As for the Isaac power, it was...

Oh, shit! What?! No! That couldn't be... No!

REQUIREMENTS:  
KILL A BABY

Biting down on my fist to keep myself from screaming, I tried to rationalize it; I didn't have any proof that any information I got from this sick, twisted game was accurate. I certainly couldn't remember ever... doing that. And yet, somehow... It felt true. And that was horrifying.

Also, why was I stopping myself from making loud noises? This place was completely barren and dead, unless you counted the insects. Why would I suddenly have this deep, instinctive urge to avoid drawing attention, to keep quiet?

Oh, there was that faint, golden glow in the sky, but it hadn't moved since last I checked on it, so... That was probably okay? Whatever it was?

Blinking a few tears from my eyes, I scrubbed my face with my hands, trying to clear my mind. I could use something to cheer me up. Maybe the game had another stupid pun? Flicking through the rest of the Blaster powers, I found another one I'd unlocked. Oh, hey. Potty humour counted as comedy, right? Even if it was the lowest form of humour, at least from an intestinal point of view.

CALL OF DOODY: SONIC ATTACK, UTILIZING THE SO-CALLED "BROWN NOTE", WHICH CAUSES TARGETS TO SUFFER INTENSE DIARRHEA.

I chuckled a little, although it was a bit forced. I probably shouldn't read the requirements for this one, if I wanted to avoid sinking back into badness. Not that I was particularly worried that I'd unlocked it by, say, flushing a baby down a toilet, or something; I just had a hunch that it would turn out to be something like: Have entire life turned to shit. Gee, thanks Emma, that's two powers you gave me.

Anyway. Browsing powers. That was a thing I was doing. Unlocked Blaster powers, specifically, useless though they were.

So far, I'd found a few powers that overlapped different categories; as far as I could tell, those powers were listed in all of the power classifications that applied to them. For example, the Fracky Friday power appeared in both the Master and the Shaker list. Browsing the Blaster powers, I found the first example I'd seen of a power with three different classifications, instead of just one or two. Sadly, it didn't seem particularly impressive, or useful. 'BROCKTON BEIGE' was a Blaster/Master/Shaker power that shot brown energy beams, which induced a strong sense of nostalgia in any living creature they hit. Additionally, the Shaker component would turn everything sepia-toned in a radius around the impact, for some length of time; due to the game's complete and utter failure to convey numbers as anything other than strings of #¤"%&(=, and other such random nonsense, I was left without any clear idea of duration, or area of effect. In any case, I didn't feel all that tempted by a heavily watered-down version of Gallant's power-set, and the dreadful colour scheme wasn't really selling it, either. Hmm, the listed requirement for unlocking it was: "FIGHT AN EMPATH WHILE DEPRESSED"; had I gone up against Gallant, at some point?

Taking a deep breath, I leaned slightly backwards and rolled my shoulders. Okay, browsing powers had been fun, for a while, but hadn't helped me much. The few snippets of information about my past life that I'd gleaned from the unlocked options hadn't done anything to clear my muddled memories. Some of them were just plain depressing. Now, I needed to make a plan. I didn't know what I'd need to do if I wanted to unlock new powers. Instead, I'd just have to pick the most promising power available, and try to learn as much as I could about this game.

Scrutinizing the list of twelve different power categories, I mused on my options. Tinker and Thinker abilities were some of the most versatile powers, usually, and eminently suited for my self-imposed information gathering mission. The list of Tinker powers hadn't yielded any really good options. So, time to think about Thinking, methinks.

...Crap, now I'm doing it, too.

Once the list of Thinker powers was opened, it turned out to be a dismaying sight; a rich plethora of sensory enhancers and mental mojo that could unravel the secrets of the universe – all of them grayed out and locked away from me. Maybe I should give the Tinker powers another look, or try the-

Wait! Go back a bit. Scroll, scroll... There! A single, solitary line of glowing white words.

VIP (VOODOO-IMMOLATED PIRACY)

...And this was listed under Thinker powers? Huh. Actually, it was another of those rare triple-category options; a Breaker/Thinker/Trump power, that apparently involved voodoo fire, and something called a Scumm Engine – trademarked, no less.

It wasn't really clear how the Thinker aspect worked, but the voodoo fire could either be part of a Breaker state, if it literally set me ablaze, or a Trump power, if it somehow let me... set voodoo dolls on fire, to mess with other parahuman powers? That still left the mysterious Scumm Engine, which might mean it was involved in the Thinker aspect... Oh, and that bit about piracy. Something to do with theft of intellectual property, maybe? Super-powered copyright violations? Didn't the internet already have that ability?

Heck, for all I knew, that Scumm Engine whatsit might actually be a SCUMM Engine – since the game wrote absolutely everything in all caps, it was impossible to tell acronyms and plain text apart. Were the game designers insulting me again, implying that they needed to figuratively shout to make me understand their point? Or did they just find it amusing to make me suffer through walls of capitalized text? Either way, this insight didn't help me much, since I still had no idea what Scumm, or SCUMM, meant. Given this game's track record, it probably wasn't anything nice.

Nevertheless, this was the only available Thinker power. It even included a Trump aspect, which could potentially be a game breaker. (Well, it was already a Breaker power, but that was besides the point.) The description didn't sound outright useless or horrifying, like most of the other available powers. Unless I wanted to go back to my original bug power, this seemed like my best bet.

Plus, I'd always wanted to be a pirate.

Checking the description one more time, I noted that the requirement for unlocking this VIP option was to 'DIE TWICE BEFORE BODY STOPS MOVING'. Well, if the game was to be believed, that was confirmation that I really had died. Had I needed CPR, at some point?

Come to think of it, how likely was it that I'd be able to pull off something like that again? I'd been halfway assuming that the game would allow me to continue amassing achievements, unlocking new powers as I went; what if it reset, after each game? It was advertising its brutality, right there in the title. It would hardly be much of a stretch to think that whoever had designed this entire mess, might also find it amusing to take away the player's accomplishments when they started a new game. If that turned out to be the case, it might take me a long while before I unlocked this particular power again.

Mind made up, I turned to the words 'ACCEPT' and 'CANCEL' that were floating at the bottom of the VIP power's text box, and tapped the glowing letters to the left. The writing faded, and was replaced by a new message in mid-air.

CHOOSE LETHALITY

EASY  
HARD  
INSANE  
LUDICROUS

It didn't surprise me that, in a game where the words 'Agonizing Demise' were parts of the title, they would forego such niceties as 'difficulty levels', and move straight to the not-at-all-veiled death threats. Oh, and they'd also skipped the 'Normal' mode entirely, for some reason... Which raised all kinds of questions about the so-called 'Easy' mode.

Still, the fastest way to answer some of those questions would be through first-hand observations. Besides, I might luck out and discover that the 'Easy' mode really was exactly that. Weirder things had happened, right?

Squaring my shoulders and planting my feet in readiness for either fight or flight, I reached for the first glowing word in the list. Tapping on 'EASY', I was rewarded with another, seemingly final choice.

START NEW GAME?

YES/NO

Reach.

Tap.

The world turned white. Nothingness prevailed for a long moment, before a different reality faded into being around me.

I wasn't wearing a wristwatch, or have any kind of clock readily available. Still, by my rough calculations, I managed to last about thirty seconds in my second attempt at life. Then, I died. Again.

Dammit.

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	2. Chapter 2

**CYOAD is Unfortunately Not a Typo - Chapter 2**

.cyoad. .cyoad. .cyoad. .cyoad. .cyoad. .cyoad.

More zombie pirate adventures, just in time for Halloween. Enjoy the chapt-arrr!

.cyoad. .cyoad. .cyoad. .cyoad. .cyoad. .cyoad.

My mind sluggishly drifted into awareness. Memories of the last few hours – falling through darkness, landing on a world of corpses and insects, discovering the CYOAD game, browsing the power lists, starting a new game on Easy mode – gradually clicked together in a more or less coherent way.

Opening one eye in a careful squint, I recognized the room around me. It was a bathroom, my bathroom; I was back home at Hebert Manor, as Mom had sometimes jokingly called our house.

Thinking of Mom triggered a jab of pain. It took a few seconds before I realized that the emotional anguish was accompanied by actual, physical pain, as well.

Both my eyes flew wide open, as my brain caught up with my senses. I was sitting in our bathtub. My wrists were slit open, gaping red and raw. The water had been stained dark red with the blood that pumped rhythmically from my wounds. A quick glance to the side of the tub found a red-smeared razor blade, lying on the edge of the bathroom sink. Next to the blade stood an empty pill bottle.

As I started to panic, my flailing attempts at finding a way to bandage my wrists, and then purge my stomach, were interrupted by the sudden appearance of a scroll of parchment. It simply popped into existence, hovering in mid-air over the bloodied bathtub, and unfurled itself.

ACHIEVEMENT UNLOCKED!  
EARLY BIRD GETS OUT OF WORM

Below the caption was a stick figure person, like you'd see on a road sign. The stylized human was blithely sauntering over the side of a cliff, into a pit filled with spikes, blades, and rotary saws. One of its stick figure arms was holding a gun, which it was pointing at its own head, while the other arm was placing a noose around the figure's neck. Another string of text appeared at the bottom of the parchment:

YOU'VE GAINED THIS BADGE FOR LEAVING EARTH BET BEFORE THE RUSH

I barely managed to read the last sentence, before I sank back into unconsciousness.

.cyoad. .cyoad. .cyoad. .cyoad. .cyoad. .cyoad.

After waking up back at the START screen, lying on the carpet of bugs and bones, I hurriedly checked my wrists. They looked smooth and undamaged.

I breathed a deep sigh, feeling more weary than frightened, as the previous surge of adrenaline seemed to have left my system in the same miraculous way that my injuries had vanished.

Maybe I should try to empty my stomach, just in case I'd actually swallowed any pills in Easy mode, and they hadn't disappeared on their own? Still, I had a hunch that 'dying' in the game had effectively reset me to a default safe state, here at the starting point, and it seemed appropriate to listen to a gut feeling, when it came to matters involving my stomach content. Besides, my current mood wasn't going to be improved by puking.

With the benefit of hindsight, it wasn't surprising that this CYOAD game would think suicide was Easy mode. It was, after all, the proverbial 'easy way out'. That didn't make the experience any less sucky, though.

Humming the theme tune to the old M.A.S.H. show, that I vaguely remembered watching with Dad, I slumped back into the mountain of bugs, trying to relax. None of the insects had tried to hurt me, so far, and the sensation of having tiny, scuttling, multi-legged creatures squirming all over my body was oddly comforting; like a nostalgic reminder of my old Master power.

"It brings on many changes," I sang under my breath. "And you can take or leave it, as you please..."

I stared up at the reddened sky, trying not to think of churning red waters.

Closing my eyes, I decided I'd earned a bit of rest.

"...Are you done feeling sorry for yourself, soon? Some of us are trying to decompose, here."

My eyes opened wide.

That voice had come from directly behind me.

I was lying down, which meant-

Scrambling to my feet, I spun around and stared at the carpet of bugs I'd been using as a picnic blanket. Well, the bugs were having the picnic, I suppose. With no better tools available, I used my bare hands to sweep some of the bugs, both the crushed and still-scurrying ones, away. The accumulated piles of skeletal remains gleamed oddly in the gloomy illumination from the reddened sky. "Who said that?" Was there a person buried under the bones, or...?

"Me," drawled one of the skulls, its jawbone clacking against the other bones in the pile as it moved. "Thanks for getting off of me, by the way. You were ruining my view, and it was pretty terrible to start with."

"Your voice..." I frowned. "It seems familiar, somehow... Do we know each other?"

The skull hesitated, before she spoke again in that surprisingly normal-sounding female voice that niggled at my memories. How many young girls had I known, before? "Sorry," she said. "Ninety-four point oh seven three percent chance that you wouldn't recognize my name if I told you."

I carefully scooped her up, holding her skull in front of my face as we talked. Trying to sound cheerful, I did my best to play along. "Well, I've got to call you something." Maybe she was just spouting numbers as a game, to distract herself from her current state of... Whatever she was? "Should I just think of a name for you, then?"

"I'd rather you didn't," she glared at me, an impressive feat for someone with no eyeballs. "Seventy-six point four four five percent chance that your ideas are gonna suck."

I scratched my chin with my free hand, holding her aloft in a straight arm. "Hmm... How about Yorick? Or Yorickette, I suppose?"

"Because I'm a skull, and you know me, barely," she dead-panned. "Delightful."

"Ophelia, then?" I scrambled to recall other girl's names from that play, then cast about for other ideas. "Uh, Craniamanda? Or how about... Dana? Because of that show from Earth Aleph, Z-Files or whatever? You know, the one where they're always chasing zombies, and... Zpace alienz?" Was that why it had a 'Z' in the title? "Seriously, why can't you just tell me your name?"

"Nope, sorry," she wiggled in my hand, shaking her head. "You've ruined it with awful puns, now. Eighty-three point two five nine percent chance you'll laugh if I tell you my name now."

"Seriously?" I stared at her, comically wide-eyed. "Your name really is Craniamanda?" I endured her withering glare for several seconds, before bursting into laughter. "Okay, sorry. Please tell me your name. I promise I won't laugh." I sat down in a cross-legged pose on the bug swarm, perching her skull on my lap. I folded my hands, and presented her with my best puppy-dog eyes. "Ple-e-ease?"

For a long minute, I thought she was going to continue her refusal. Then, she finally broke the awkward silence. "Dinah," said the dead girl. "My name is Dinah."

There was silence for a moment, if you didn't count the whistling winds and faint scritch-scritch of insects scuttling underfoot.

"Go on," Dinah sighed. "Chuckle if you must. Get it out of your system."

I smiled, just a little. "You've got to admit, that coincidence was kinda funny."

She scoffed. "I will admit no such thing!"

"Fair enough," I giggled. "Hey, do you wanna hear something neat?"

She sighed. "Yes, we're living in a video game, now. Yes, you get to pick any power you want from a huge list. Whoop-dee-doo."

I blinked at her. "Uh... Yeah. You're pretty well-informed, huh?"

"Thinker powers tend to do that," Dinah said. "It's not as great as you might... Imagine."

I grinned. "Were you about to say 'think', again?"

Her skull turned, glancing to the side. "...Shut up."

Straightening a little, I smiled at her. "Well, _I_ think I'm ready to give this crazy game another try. Wanna come with?"

I still hadn't gotten used to the sensation of Dinah shaking her skull from side to side in my hand. "Ninety-two point eight seven three percent chance I won't be able to follow you back into the world, as I am."

That didn't really answer whether she'd want to come with me or not. She did sound kinda wistful, though. Wait, qualifiers are important...

"As you are?" I asked. "You mean, you need something to come with me?"

Dinah's skull made a snorting noise. "A body would be a good start – my own, for preference. The odds are better with original factory defaults."

I stared out at the seemingly endless field of skeletal remains, covered in a possibly infinite swarm of bugs. "Uh... Any ideas where we should start looking?"

"Gee," said Dinah. "Let me Think about it." Her skull twisted against my palm, her empty sockets glancing up at me. "That was 'Think' with a capital 'T', by the way."

I rolled my eyes at her. "Yeah, I guessed as much."

Turns out that, even when you're carrying the cranium of a pre-teen precog, rummaging through a corpse buffet is never fun. I didn't have much respect for grave robbers, but after this experience, I might grudgingly admit that they at least put in a lot of hard work.

"Alright," said Dinah, after I'd dug out yet another piece of bone. "That's the last of what we need."

"Finally!" I blew out a deep breath, more out of habit than necessity. My body didn't seem to depend on plebeian little things like oxygen, anymore. I leaned back where I sat at the crest of a bone dune, resting my weight on one hand. Holding up the tiny white fragment, I turned it this way and that while examining it. "Are you sure it's the right one, though? It looks the same as every other finger bone, to me."

"Well..." Dinah hesitated. "There's... Good news, and bad news, I suppose."

I sat up straight. "What? Are the pieces wrong, after all? Do we need to do more digging?"

"Nah, everything we need to Build-A-Biology-Teaching-Aid me back to full mobility is here." She nodded her skull at the bundle of bones we'd gathered - well, I'd done the lifting and carrying, and every other manual part of the labor involved, while Dinah gave directions and occasional sardonic commentary. I'd pulled off my hoodie, and tied it off with the drawstrings at the neck and knotted the sleeves, to turn it into an improvised sack, for corpse-carrying purposes.

That part was Dinah's idea, in case you're wondering. ("Listen, you've already been rolling around in the crunchy not-quite-white snow substitute, making bug angels and bone angels. This won't make your clothes any worse off than they already are.")

"Okay," I said. "That's the good news, I suppose? So... What's the bad news?"

Dinah whistled a little jingle that I vaguely recognized from old toy commercials. Pretty good, for a girl with no lips. "Some assembly required," she said.

I just sighed, and got back to work.

It's hard to say for sure which one of us started, but after a while, we were both singing "The leg bone's connected to the hip bone".

"Y'know, you're gonna owe me at least three favors, when I'm done with all this," I grumbled. Whenever I attached a couple of her bones to one another, they snapped together like they were being pulled by invisible rubber bands. It was an odd sensation, but after the first three dozen or so repetitions of it, the novelty had pretty much worn off.

"I know," Dinah said. "Tell you what, I'll let you have my dessert for a month, how about that?"

I gave her a look. "Do you even need to eat, anymore?"

"Three months, and that's my final offer."

"I mean, you don't have lips, or a digestive system," I argued. "You don't have a tongue, either, so it's not like you could even taste the food."

"Good thing I don't have tear ducts, either," Dinah deadpanned. "Otherwise, I'd be bawling my non-existent eyes out over your cruel remarks."

I ignored her in favor of rummaging around in my hoodie-sack, starting to feel like the world's creepiest Santa. Okay, maybe if I had a big white beard made of spider webs, it'd be a little more Halloween-y, but not by much.

"Sobbing, I tell you," Dinah said. "Gross, messy weepage."

I turned the hoodie-bag upside down, which meant it was the right way up for a hoodie, and shook it. Nothing fell out of the opening at the bottom. "I think that was the last of the pieces." Untying the knots, I slipped the hoodie back on. Dead people smell or no dead people smell, at least the long sleeves covered my wrists. There might not be any scars, but in my mind's eye, I still sometimes pictured the long red cuts I'd seen there.

"Great! Geronimooo," Dinah cried, as her skull did a little hop and a somersault. She rolled forward, bouncing across the uneven, skeletal terrain, until she bumped into the top of her spinal column. There was a twanging noise, and her skull scooted into place on her neck.

"Did it work?" I really, really hoped it did. Having gone through all that work, only for her to maybe discover that she needed muscles and sinews to do more than just wiggle around like a big, white bone-worm, would have sucked in a major way. "Try moving your fingers and toes."

Slowly, she raised her arms, clenching both hands into bony fists, then flexing each finger individually. "Eighty-four point four three nine percent chance that I'm above seventy-five percent operational." She reached her arms towards me, making grabby motions with her hands. "However, my legs aren't fully reliable, quite yet. Any chance of a piggyback ride?"

I sighed, but turned around and crouched down so she could climb up on my back. Dinah wrapped her arm bones around my neck and shoulders, hanging on. Standing up took barely any extra effort; small girls with no organs or muscles didn't weigh much.

"Giddy-up!" She cried, briefly freeing one arm to slap me on the butt. "I'd have shouted 'Mush!', but I didn't want you to think we were under attack by the Merchants or something."

I started picking my way across the mass graves - being buried in bugs still counted as a sort of burial, right? - back towards the START screen. "I don't mind carrying you, but I draw the line at making clippety-clop noises."

Before I'd taken more than a dozen steps, I scrambled to a halt when a new message scroll popped up in front of us.

ACHIEVEMENT UNLOCKED!

CADAVER CAVORTER

It had a picture of a stick figure throwing three skulls in the air, possibly trying to juggle them.

YOU'VE GAINED THIS BADGE FOR PLAYING WITH HUMAN LEGOS FOR MORE THAN &%#)*&-\ HOURS

I stared at it. "Hey, Dinah? Are you seeing what I'm seeing?"

I felt her nod against the back of my head. "Uh-huh. Also, before you ask how long this took... Are you sure you want to know? I mean, time doesn't mean much when you're dead, right?"

I started walking again. "...Guess not."

She tightened her grip a little for a moment, which I interpreted as a small hug. "Anyway, time flies when you're having fun," she said.

"Fun, huh?" I trudged through the carpet of beetles, feeling some of them crunch underfoot. "I wonder what that feels like."

Once we reached the START screen, I stopped to consider my options. "The first game was a wash, so I guess I should move on to HARD mode, this time."

Dinah stuck an arm out over my shoulder, and gave me a thumbs up. "Solid plan. We can get killed again even faster, that way."

"That's the spirit, let's stay positive," I smiled. "Anyway, the question is: Should I try a different power? Some of the others didn't sound too bad, and who knows? I might have unlocked some cool new ones, with the achievements I got."

Dinah was silent for a moment. "...I think you should stick with the same power as last time. It's bad scientific practice to alter more than one variable at a time, when you're conducting an experiment, and you've already decided to change the difficulty setting."

That sounded like good advice. Although, Dinah's voice seemed oddly tense...

A thought occurred. It wasn't an entirely pleasant one.

"Dinah?" I asked, glancing over my shoulder. "Did my power... Is it responsible for you being able to talk, and move around?" It made a certain amount of sense, given the use of words like 'VOODOO' in the description.

Dinah stayed quiet for a moment. "The numbers are inconclusive," she whispered. Her arms were a little tighter around my shoulders.

I straightened, and nodded once. Tapping at the screen didn't take long, now that my mind was made up. If I wanted to play around with different powers, it'd be at the cost of a young girl's life - her second life, at that, much like mine, even if she had considerably less body mass left. I had no idea whether choosing a different power would just banish Dinah back into non-undead oblivion, or if it would cause her pain, first. Heck, it might not affect her at all; she might linger as a byproduct of my power, even if I didn't have that power anymore - but I wasn't going to take that risk.

On a more selfish level, Dinah might or might not have been a friend to me in our past lives, but she was definitely on my very short list of current allies. It was nice to have someone to talk to, about the game, and everything else.

A small voice in the back of my mind whispered: Keeping the V.I.P. power means getting access to Dinah's Thinker power, as well. It's a two-for-one deal, and an extra pair of eyes - well, eye sockets - watching our backs.

It wasn't a particularly nice thought, but that didn't make it any less true.

After selecting the V.I.P. power again and the HARD difficulty, I hesitated before starting a new game. I looked at Dinah over my shoulder. "Ready?"

She gave a firm nod, squeezing my shoulders in another skeleton hug. "Ready."

I tapped the button.

.cyoad. .cyoad. .cyoad. .cyoad. .cyoad. .cyoad.

This time around, I woke to the sound of voices.

"Hurry up with the injection!"

"Give her two more units intravenous, stat!"

"We're losing her!"

Shouting voices. Not the best way to start the day.

Cracking open one eye halfway, I took a look around. First impression said: Hospital room. Second impression went more along the lines of: Fuck me sideways, that's a lot of blood.

.cyoad. .cyoad. .cyoad. .cyoad. .cyoad. .cyoad.


End file.
